This book is a delectable flavor of insanity surrounding an info hazard of which the man is aware, and aware of his own inability to mount the defense. And yet he falls victim to the trap every time.

The defense is not just the interrupted game against Turati, which causes the titular character to go insane, but also everything that follows wherein he has to remove himself from the game and the world of chess altogether. The defense becomes a framework against thinking about playing about chess and he approaches this with the same tack and strategic line that he applied to the game against Turati itself, eventually driving him insane.

He begins to describe his erratic behavior in life with the same language that he would use to describe brilliantly, surprising and ingenious chess moves

I forget the name of the rhetorical device where in new substitute a thing for the thing that it represents, i.e. the black Knight, being the window frame and the hole there in. But towards the end, we're losing rests his elbows on the black night, which is his opponent that is a chess plan.

He found himself in a mortifying position

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